Roofing membranes are applied on top of roof insulation boards to protect the roof insulation boards or roof deck surface/substrate, and provide a layer of waterproofing. Typically, these roofing membranes are made of EPDM, TPO, PVC or other waterproofing materials. Lately, such roofing membranes have been coated or laminated with fleece backings as a way to provide toughness, durability, strength and mechanical stiffness to the roofing membrane itself. In addition, such fleece back roofing membranes have the advantage of withstanding extreme weather conditions (such as wind uplift and hail). An example of a fleece backed roofing material is the FleeceBACK® roofing membrane product line manufactured by Carlisle Construction Materials LLC of Carlisle, Pa.
In recent approaches, these fleece backed roofing membranes may be attached to the insulation boards using hook and loop fasteners (for example, Velcro®). Specifically, the fleece backing on the roofing membrane forms the “loop” layer and the “hook” layer can be a Velcro® hook layer (or any other hook layer manufactured by any other company) that is pre-attached onto the insulation boards. An advantage of this method is that the roofing membrane can be attached to the insulation boards without using a messy layer of adhesives. The installation job can therefore be done quickly, cleanly and easily.
Unfortunately, it has proven somewhat challenging to simply apply a hook layer onto a standard insulation board. This is because simply gluing the hook layer onto the top of the insulation boards (prior to shipment to a jobsite) is quite costly and can have production capacity constraints. Moreover, attempts at combining a Velcro® (or any other) hook layer to the insulation board in a traditional manufacturing can result in situations where the insulation board does not stay flat and the polyisocyanurate foam doesn't naturally/readily bond to the hook film. Specifically, problems can include warpage both down the length of the insulation board and across the width of the insulation board. Another problem with combining the hook layer onto the insulation board on the traditional polyiso online lamination process is cutting the combined insulation board and hook layer since the cutting process tends to fray the edges of the hook layer along the sides of the insulation board and/or melt the thermoplastic hook film polymer onto the mechanical saw blades traditionally used in insulation production processes.
In contrast, the present methods and systems provide easy and clean ways to attach the hook layer directly onto the insulation boards. These novel processes both save time and money. In addition, the present methods attach the hook layer onto the cured insulation board in a way such that the insulation board remains flat after the hook layer has been attached. Thus, the effect of wrinkling is minimized.